Main menu

Post navigation

Sunny Dubai

The weather in Dubai was great. Every morning we awoke to crystal clear blue skies. We saw most of the city while on a bus tour, which had two loops. They took us to both the new and old parts of Dubai that included the Dubai Museum, the Bastakia area, the Gold Souk, an area that has over 300 gold stores. I dragged Adrian from store to store looking at the vast array of gold jewellery and diamonds. I bought a white gold necklace for the pendant Adrian gave me for Christmas. We also visited the Souk Madinat Jumeriah which is a traditional souk with lots of different Arabic stores.

It was pretty amazing driving down Sheikh Zayed Road where all the huge skyscrapers are. There is still a lot of construction going on with the tallest building in the world currently being built. There are lots of beautiful buildings, mostly 5 star hotels and luxurious apartments. There are without a doubt some very weathly people in Dubai.

Burj Al Arab

What a site

The highlight of the trip was definitely afternoon tea in the SkyView bar at the Burj al Arab. For those that don’t know, the Burj al Arab is the worlds only 7 star hotel. We felt like king and queen as they brought out more and more lovely food while sitting 200m high above ground, overlooking Dubai and the ocean, it was really beautiful. Words can’t really describe how excellent it was. Click here to see where the SkyView bar is. The hotel itself is absolutely stunning both on the outside and inside. We walked along the private beach afterwards to see it at the start of sunset. It was quite an expensive afternoon tea but was worth every cent.

Emirates Towers

Straight after the Burj al Arab we headed to the Emirate Towers, two identical towers in Jumeirah. One tower is a luxury hotel (there are 100s of 5 star plus hotels in Dubai), we went to a ritzy bar at the very top (about 200m high) and watched the sunset. It was great to live the life of the super rich for half a day.

Desert Safari

Another highlight was the desert safari. Let me just say I didn’t think we were going to make it out alive! The driver of our 4 wheel drive was doing almost 160km down the highway on the way to the desert and then once we actually got to the desert it was crazy! We drove up and down the sand dunes at fast speeds and at times I thought the car was going to roll. It was a very fun experience though which included a traditional Arabic dinner at a camp with a belly dancer, camel rides and Adrian had a go on their quad bikes.

We spent our second last day at Dubai’s largest shopping mall, The Mall of Emirates which also has the world largest indoor ski slope. It is a massive mall with over 500 stores. Overall we didn’t buy too many things for spending over 7 hours there! On the topic of shopping I have to mention diamonds! I saw by far the biggest diamonds I have ever seen in my life, I was in awe as I walked from store to store looking at these massive diamonds rings that just wouldn’t be practical to wear. I’m sure Adrian lost count of how many times I said to him “look at that diamond”!

All in all, Adrian and I both had a fantastic time and definitely consider Dubai as one of the highlights of our trip so far.